Description: "There's no such thing as rural America. Or, rather, as Steven Conn argues, "rural America" is a phrase that has been made to mean so many things that it doesn't mean anything. In fact, he maintains, rural America--so often characterized as in crisis or in danger of being left behind--has been shaped by the same major forces as the rest of the country since at least the end of the Civil War: militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and suburbanization. Conn calls for us to dispense with the fantasies and visions that are often imposed on rural America, in the hopes of more productively addressing the real challenges facing all of America"--
Brief description: Steven Conn is the W. E. Smith Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of many books, most recently Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools.
Review Quotes: "[Conn] urges readers to jettison myths about rural America, which obscure more than they reveal. In fact, he suggests, rural America itself is a fictional whole that fails to synthesize its fractal parts. Conn's major insight, however, is to suggest that rather than places apart, rural American communities were reshaped by the central forces of 20th-century US history--militarization, industrialization, corporatization, and suburbanization--and not always for the better."-- "Public Books"